Director Health System Patient Safety

UT Southwestern Medical Center • Dallas, TX

7d • Onsite

About The Position

The Director, Health System Patient Safety provides recommendations for the design, execution, and sustained advancement of patient safety across UT Southwestern Health System. This role reports to the Associate Vice President of Quality & Operational Excellence. It is accountable for translating the Performance Excellence System and High Reliability principles into consistent, measurable, and reliable practice across all sites of care. Serving as the system's subject-matter expert in patient safety, the Director recommends a coordinated, system-wide approach to identifying risks, reducing harm, and strengthening a culture of safety and learning. This role ensures that strategy is operationalized through aligned systems, standard work, and disciplined execution, advancing UT Southwestern's mission, academic distinction, and commitment to exceptional patient care.

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree in Nursing, Public Health, Health Administration, or related field
• 10 years of progressive experience in quality improvement and patient safety with a Bachelor’s degree, or 7 years of progressive experience with a Master’s degree.
• 5 years leading patient safety or quality improvement professionals
• Demonstrated success leading enterprise or system-level initiatives in complex, matrixed healthcare environments

Nice To Haves

• Master's Degree in Nursing, Public Health, Health Administration, or related field.

Responsibilities

• Recommend a comprehensive, system-wide patient safety strategy aligned with the Performance Excellence System, High Reliability principles, and organizational priorities.
• Establish and standardize enterprise frameworks, policies, and expectations for patient safety across inpatient, ambulatory, and procedural settings.
• Integrate patient safety into the broader Performance Excellence System, ensuring alignment with quality, patient experience, workforce, and operational priorities.
• Translate strategic priorities into clear execution pathways, enabling consistency across a complex, matrixed academic health system.
• Partner with Quality & Operational Excellence leaders, entity leadership, and Patient Safety Officers (PSOs) to ensure alignment and disciplined execution of patient safety priorities, driving consistency, reducing variation, and advancing system-wide performance.
• Drive consistent application of the Performance Excellence System across all sites of care in partnership with entity leadership and PSOs.
• Assess system and entity performance to identify variation, systemic risks, and improvement opportunities.
• Recommend enterprise and entity-level initiatives that convert learning into standard work, measurable outcomes, and sustained results.
• Enable the spread and adoption of effective practices and innovations across the health system.
• Oversee the design and execution of comprehensive patient safety programs and initiatives to reduce harm and prevent adverse events.
• Establish RCAA (Root Cause Analysis and Action) as the standard methodology for event investigation and learning across the health system, ensuring a consistent, systems-based approach to identifying contributing factors and implementing strong, sustainable actions.
• Ensure RCAA outputs translate into standard work, measurable improvement, and system-level learning, not isolated corrective actions.
• Ensure effective systems for event reporting, analysis, and proactive risk identification, including near misses and high-risk conditions.
• Design and continuously improve processes to collect, manage, and report safety data in alignment with regulatory and accreditation requirements.
• Align patient safety plans with organizational performance improvement priorities and timelines.
• Collaborate with PSOs to align enterprise priorities with local execution, including event management, safety huddles, RCAA investigations, and improvement initiatives.
• Provide standardized tools, analytics, education, and coaching to strengthen execution and build capability.
• Convene system-wide forums to share learning, identify cross-entity risks, and coordinate improvement efforts.
• Partner on complex, high-risk, or system-level safety challenges requiring coordinated action.
• Recommend an enterprise approach to culture of safety assessment, interpretation, and action planning, translating insights into targeted improvement.
• Develop and deploy education, coaching, and leadership development that strengthens safety behaviors, teamwork, and psychological safety.
• Foster a learning health system environment, where frontline insights and RCAA findings are translated into system-level improvement.
• Reinforce that culture is the outcome of consistent systems, leadership behaviors, and disciplined execution.
• Define and steward enterprise patient safety metrics, targets, and performance thresholds, aligned with the system Balanced Scorecard.
• Provide the AVP, executive leadership, governance committees, and boards with integrated insights on safety performance, trends, risks, and improvement progress.
• Ensure alignment with regulatory, accreditation, and public reporting expectations through standardized systems and proactive risk management.
• Translate complex data into clear, actionable insights that drive decision-making and accountability at all levels.
• Lead and develop a high-performing patient safety team through clear expectations, coaching, and accountability.
• Build system-wide capability to ensure teams can execute safety and improvement work reliably, including RCAA proficiency.
• Foster strong partnerships across clinical, operational, and administrative leadership to advance a coordinated, enterprise approach to safety.

Benefits

• PPO medical plan, available day one at no cost for full-time employee-only coverage
• 100%25 coverage for preventive healthcare-no copay
• Paid Time Off, available day one
• Retirement Programs through the Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS)
• Paid Parental Leave Benefit
• Wellness programs
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Qualified Employer

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director